A blog by Kimberly Jensen, Professor of History and Gender Studies at Western Oregon University, with a focus on my research and writing projects in women's history. My current research is for a book project tentatively titled “Civic Borderlands: Oregon Women’s Claims to Citizenship and Civil Liberties, 1913-1924”

Search This Blog

Sunday, February 27, 2011

As they approached the election of 1912 Oregon suffragists believed that the system of initiative petition, part of progressive reform legislation known as the Oregon System, held great promise for empowering the people to enact legislation of importance to them. Oregon voterspassed the initiative in 1902. With enough signatures of registered voters equaling a percentage of votes from the last election, citizens could place a measure on the next statewide ballot.
Suffragists used the initiative process to place a votes for women measure on the ballot in 1906, 1908, and 1910. In December 1910 they had enough signatures for the next campaign, well in advance of the deadline for the November 5, 1912 election.I've been blogging about the Oregon 1911 legislature and state legislators' vote of support for the votes for women measure already in place for the 1912 ballot. This editorial cartoon from the Oregonian in January 1911 reflects the view of progressive Oregonians that the initiative process empowered the people to enact legislation (like votes for women) in spite of a recalcitrant legislature.

"Reckon You Won't Find Much Left To Do In There, My Friend," Oregonian, January 10, 1911, 1.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Clubwoman and Portland Market Inspector Sarah A. Evanswrote about Oregon women and the 1911 legislative session in her weekly Women's Clubs column for the Oregon Journal (February 26, 1911, 5:7). She assessed the political action of women and contrasted lobbying and attempts to influence the political process with the greater power of the vote. Washington women had achieved the vote in 1910 and were using it; Oregon women and their supporters had gathered enough signatures to put the measure on the 1912 ballot and the Oregon legislature had just endorsed it.
These developments gave her the context to emphasize the importance of the vote for women to achieve reform. "Women," Evans wrote, "have much to be thankful to the twenty-sixth legislative assembly, and a little to be resentful for, and a great deal to study over."
Evans counted several gains. One was legislation establishing the Oregon State Board of Nursing "which will put the profession on a dignified footing and insure to the state the most efficient service." Another was the end to Oregon's controversial whipping post law for men convicted of domestic violence. "Women of Oregon would sooner have seen the whipping post abolished than kept on the statute book," she wrote, "not that they object to the wife beater being whipped, but because it is a reflection on the women of the state that they would allow themselves--even a few--to be whipped for it isn't the stuff the real Oregon woman is made of, and the world should not think she had to be protected." (For more on the whipping post law, see David Peterson Del Mar, "His Face is Weak and Sensual": Portland and the Whipping Post Law," in Women in Pacific Northwest History ed. Karen J. Blair, rev. ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988): 59-89.)
The 1911 legislative session provided a strong lesson about the need for woman suffrage for Evans. The "strongest body of women lobbyists that ever went to the legislature," she wrote, failed to convince the Oregon legislature to pass a statewide pure milk law. Portland women, led by Esther Pohl, Evans and a coalition of activists, had passed several progressively stronger city ordinances for pure milk (my forthcoming biography of Esther Pohl Lovejoy explores this in detail). In 1911 they hoped to remove state Dairy and Food Commissioner J.W. Bailey and pass a statewide bill. Governor Oswald West asked the legislature to investigate and women testified before a joint house and senate committee. The failure of this bill, for Evans, proved that women without the vote, even though working actively in the political process through coalition building and lobbying, could not hope to effect political, social and economic change in a significant way.
"Influence," she wrote, "only reaches to the narrow confines of one home each, and sometimes not that far." Suffrage supporters like Esther Pohl Lovejoy joined Evans in calling for the vote to achieve what "influence" could not.
Evans also provided a perspective on what lobbying was like for women in 1911 before the achievement of woman suffrage. "No woman enjoys lobbying: she is met with cold indifference, distrust and often jeers and jokes; she feels herself out of place and she is as long as she holds an inferior place among those she is trying to influence, and it is only the brave and courageous who will dare this for a just cause." Oregon women, she wrote, were "wrestling with the legislature."
She contrasted this with the recent action by newly enfranchised Seattle women to recall Mayor Hiram Gill, whom they felt was not addressing gambling and prostitution in the city. (For more on this see Shanna Stevenson, Women's Votes, Women's Voices: The Campaign for Equal Rights in Washington (Tacoma: Washington State Historical Society, 2009) and John C. Putnam, Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2008).) Seattle women, she wrote, "did not have to rush to Olympia by an early train, remain away from their families several days, face a jibing crowd of political corruptionists, and plead their case before an unbelieving committee" as Oregon women had just done in Salem. They went to the polls and voted.
For Evans "this is the greatest lesson the legislature left the women of Oregon to ponder on."

Thursday, February 17, 2011

On February 17, Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives John Rusk and President of the Oregon Senate Ben Selling signed Senate Joint Resolution 12:

Be it resolved by the Senate, the House concurring:

That we have carefully considered the Equal Suffrage Amendment, as submitted by initiative petition to the present legal voters of the State, for their adoption or rejection, and can see no reasonable objection to its adoption, and we cordially recommend its ratification at the November election of 1912.

Members of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association had collected enough signatures through initiative petition by December 1910 to place the measure on the November 5, 1912 ballot. Now by February 17, 1911 with SJR12 the Oregon state legislature lent its support to votes for women in the state.

I'll be blogging about subsequent events in the rich history of this campaign one hundred years ago here, among other Esther Lovejoy materials and Oregon women's history.

FEBRUARY 17, 1911

Friday, February 17, 1911, Morning Session, Oregon House of Representatives

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

We’re following the course of Senate Joint Resolution 12 and House Concurrent Resolution 24through the Oregon legislature one hundred years ago in February 1911. The Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association asked legislators to “cordially recommend” the ratification of the woman suffrage measure, already slated for the November 1912 ballot as a result of a successful initiative petition.

Representative Timothy Brownhill, who had introduced HCR 24, withdrew his resolution so that the senate’s identical resolution (SJR 12) might pass. “I believe that it should be adopted as a tribute to that splendid woman, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, who has devoted so many years of her life to the cause, and also because it paves the way toward giving the women of the state their rights,” Brownhill told the Oregon Journal (“To Vote Again on Woman Suffrage,” Oregon Journal, February 17, 1911, 4). The house, therefore, was to vote on SJR 12.

But not everyone in the house agreed with Brownhill. As you’ll see below, in addition to the majority report in support of SJR 12, Representatives Seneca Fouts and Linn E. Jones authored a minority report against the resolution. According to the Oregon Journal, Fouts’s “contention was that the voters had decided the question at the last election and that their opinion should be regarded as stable.” (“To Vote Again on Woman Suffrage,” Oregon Journal, February 17, 1911, 4). This was, in fact, the sixth time that the suffrage amendment was on the ballot. A third of the representatives joined him in opposing the resolution and six were absent.

But the majority prevailed -- leading to the signing of SJR 12 in both houses -- we'll see more about the signing on February 17 in the next post.

FEBRUARY 16, 1911

Thursday, February 16, 1911, Afternoon Session, Oregon House of Representatives

MAJORITY REPORT

Salem, February 15, 1911

Mr. Speaker: Your Committee on Resolutions, to whom was referred Senate Joint Resolution No. 12, beg leave to report that we have had the same under consideration, and respectfully report it back with the recommendation that it do pass.

J.A. Buchanan [Medford, Douglas, Jackson, Republican], Chairman

MINORITY REPORT

Salem, February 15, 1911

Mr. Speaker: Your Committee on Resolutions, to whom was referred Senate Joint Resolution No. 12, beg leave to report that we have had the same under consideration, and respectfully report it back with the recommendation that it do not pass.

Seneca Fouts [Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Linn E. Jones [Oregon City, Clackamas, Republican]

Mr. Fouts moved that the minority report be substituted for the majority report.

The motion was lost.

Mr. Buchanan moved that the majority report be adopted.

The roll was called and the vote was:

YEAS—33

Abbott [James D., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Abrams [Carl, Salem, Marion, Republican]

Beals [A.G., Tillamook, Tillamook, Yamhill, Republican]

Belknap [H.P., Prineville, Crook, Grant, Klamath, Lake, Republican]

Belland [L.O., Astoria, Clatsop, Republican]

Bonebrake [P.O., Philomath, Benton, Republican]

Brownhill [Timothy, McMinnville, Yamhill, Independent]

Buchanan [J.A., Medford, Douglas, Jackson, Republican]

Buckley [C.A., Grass Valley, Gilliam, Sherman, Wheeler, Republican]

Carter [E.P., Gladstone, Clackamas, Republican]

Chapman [J.A., Middleton, Washington, Republican]

Church [William J., La Grande, Union, Republican]

Clemens [W.J., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Clyde [Ralph C., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Cottel [W.I., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Cushman [I.B., Acme, Lane, Republican]

Gill [F.M., Dufur, Hood River, Wasco, Republican]

Graves [Roy, Sheridan, Yamhill, Republican]

Hollis [W.H., Forest Grove, Washington, Republican]

Leinenweber [C.A., Astoria, Clatsop, Republican]

Libby [A.C., Jefferson, Marion, Republican]

Magone [M.A., Oregon City, Clackamas, Republican]

McKinney [Henry M., Baker, Baker, Republican]

Neuner [George Jr., Roseburg, Douglas, Republican]

Peirce [S.P., Port Orford, Coos, Curry, Republican]

Peterson [S.D., Milton, Umatilla, Republican]

Rackleff [Ed, Bandon, Coos, Republican]

Reynolds [L.T., Salem, Marion, Republican]

Smith [J.C., Grants Pass, Josephine, Republican]

Sutton [W.M., Springfield, Lane, Republican]

Thompson [W. Lair, Lakeview, Crook, Grant, Klamath, Lake, Republican]

Tigard [C.F., Tigardville, Washington, Republican]

Mr. Speaker [John P. Rusk, Joseph, Union, Wallowa, Republican]

NAYS—20

Ambrose [James M., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Amme [Edwin G., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Brooke [W.H., Ontario, Harney, Malheur, Republican]

Bryant [J.C., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Chambers [F.W., Toledo, Lincoln, Polk, Republican]

Chatten [W.H., Oswego, Clackamas, Multnomah, Republican]

Cole [James, Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Collins [Stephen, Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Fouts [Seneca, Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Johnson [George W., Salem, Marion, Republican]

Jones [Linn E., Oregon City, Clackamas, Republican]

Mahoney [T.J., Heppner, Morrow, Umatilla, Republican]

Mann [L.L., Pendleton, Umatilla, Republican]

Mariner [W.J., Blalock, Gilliam, Sherman, Wheeler, Republican]

Miller, M.E. [St. Helens, Columbia, Republican]

Miller, J.W. [Albany, Linn, Republican]

Powell [Ira C., Monmouth, Polk, Republican]

Simpson [M.J., Lebanon, Linn, Republican]

Steelhammer [A.G., Silverton, Marion, Republican]

Westerlund [J.A., Medford, Jackson, Republican]

ABSENT—6

Bigelow [C.A., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Derby [A.J., Hood River, Hood River, Wasco, Democrat]

Eaton [Allen H., Eugene, Lane, Republican]

Eggleston [M.F., Ashland, Jackson, Republican]

Huntington [Ben Jr., Drain, Douglas, Republican]

Shaw [C.L., Albany, Linn, Democrat]

So the resolution was adopted.

Journal of the House of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session, 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 700.

Thursday, February 16, 1911, Afternoon Session, Oregon Senate

REPORTS OF COMMITTEES

Salem, February 16, 1911

Mr. President. Your Committee on Enrolled Bills, to whom was referred Senate Joint Resolution No. 12, beg leave to report back the same as having been correctly enrolled.

Hal D. Patton, Chairman

Journal of the Senate of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 594, 614.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

I'm blogging the February 1911 Oregon legislature's actions in support of the successful initiative petition as it happened one hundred years ago with some additional sources to help us get a fuller picture of these centennial events.
As we saw for February 9, Representative Timothy Brownhill introduced House Concurrent Resolution 24 and it contained information about the Executive Committee meeting of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association in which members decided to ask the legislature for a vote of support for their initiative petition. The petition, completed in December 1910, placed the woman suffrage measure on the ballot for the 6th time.
An entry in suffragist and clubwomanSarah Evans's "Women's Clubs" column in the Sunday Oregon Journal for February 19, 1911 gives us more information and context about the meeting. (Evans's column was an ongoing weekly feature and she reported on news of women's clubs, organizations, and activism throughout the state -- she was a blogger before her time . . . )
The first part of the entry is the same as that noted in the Journal of the Oregon House of Representatives that I reprinted for the February 9 blog here. The OSESA asks the legislators to vote their approval for the measure, a vote of confidence and support.
But here we learn more of the details -- and the article copy in full is below.
Evans writes: "The foregoing open letter was presented to every member of the legislative assembly on the 8th inst. [February 8, 1911] accompanied by a concurrent resolution cordially recommending its ratification by the legislature, and by the votes of men at the general election in November 1912."
As we've seen, the Senate voted on its Senate Joint Resolution 12 on February 10. We'll see what the House did in a future post for February 16.
At the end of this entry in Evans's column we find "The resolution passed the Senate on the eighth instant, with little doubt of its ratification by the house in due order of procedure." The Senate Journal says February 10 -- so I'm privileging that date as the more accurate one.
It's not clear who presented the open letter to the members of the Oregon legislature. The report Evans reprinted in her column, most probably authored by Abigail Scott Duniway or a close associate in the OSESA, puts things in the passive voice -- the "foregoing open letter was presented . . ." I could find no news article that indicated Duniway had presented it "in person" as the executive committee meeting request suggested. I strongly suspect that if Duniway, never one to shy away from publicity of any kind, had been there in person she would have noted it. Duniway does not include any mention of this in her 1914 autobiography Path breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States. But the OSESA put her there in the open letter as the "mother of the equal suffrage movement in Oregon."
Come back for more on the progress of the resolutions and the vote in the House. As you might guess, there was some heated debate about this 6th try for Oregon woman suffrage in November 1912.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

We are following the events of 100 years ago in the Oregon state legislature and the course of Senate Joint Resolution 12 and House Concurrent Resolution 24. The Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association asked legislators to “cordially recommend” the ratification of the ballot measure for woman suffrage placed there by initiative petition.

On February 9 legislators introduced the resolutions. On February 10, as you’ll see below, the Senate voted on the resolution. By a vote of 16 to 12 with 2 absent the measure passed. I’ve added legislators’ residence and counties and political affiliation. Of 30 senators just three were Democrats and one Independent with the rest Republicans.

FEBRUARY 10

Friday, February 10, 1911, Morning Session, Oregon House of Representatives

SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 12

Be it Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives Jointly Concurring:

Resolved by the Senate, the House Concurring: That we have carefully considered the equal suffrage amendment, as submitted by initiative petition to the present legal voters of the State, for their adoption or rejection, and we cordially recommend its ratification at the November election of 1912.

Journal of the House of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session, 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 496.

Friday, February 10, 1911, Afternoon Session, Oregon Senate

REPORT

Salem, February 10, 1911

Mr. President: Your Committee on Resolutions, to whom was referred Senate Joint Resolution No. 12, beg leave to report that we have had the same under consideration, and respectfully report it back with the recommendation that it do pass.

Dan Kellaher, Chairman.

The report was adopted.

The question being, “Shall the resolution be adopted?” the roll was called and the vote was:

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Gentle reader, thank you for your patience with my brief hiatus from this blog.

The Oregon legislature is now in session. Their predecessors gathered in Salem 100 years ago this month and took action in what would be Oregon's final campaign to achieve voting rights for women. Esther Lovejoy and many other workers contributed to the success of the November 5, 1912 ballot measure. Across these next months until that centennial in November 2012 I'll continue to blog about this vital campaign in addition to more on Lovejoy's life of activism in Oregon and beyond.

Oregon passed legislation in 1902 making it possible for citizens to place a measure on the ballot through initiative petition. In December 1910 members of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association had completed this task, well in advance of the deadline for the 1912 election. And at the end of January 1911 they acted to bring this to the formal attention of the Oregon legislature with a request for a joint resolution approving the measure. This was not the same thing as referring it to the voters for action, and the legislative support was not necessary for the initiative measure to go on the ballot (that had already been accomplished). But the joint resolution would be an important way for the legislature to signal support for the cause.

Both houses took some action 100 years ago today, on February 9, 1911, as we can see from the Oregon House and Senate Journals from 1911. Suffrage supporters in the OSESA used many of the arguments that would become the core of the campaign: Oregon was behind other states, suffrage momentum was growing and Oregon men needed to act to keep the state in step, and there had been five other campaigns and work would continue until passage. The OSESA also linked its efforts with Emma Smith Devoe of Washington State and the National Council of Women Voters.

FEBRUARY 9

Thursday, February 9, 1911, Afternoon Session, Oregon House of Representatives:

Resolved, by the House, the Senate concurring, That we have carefully considered the equal suffrage amendment, as submitted by the initiative petition to the present legal voters of the State, for their adoption or rejection, and can see no reasonable objection to its adoption, and we cordially recommend its ratification at the November election of 1912.

The executive committee of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association, at its meeting on the 31st day of January, held under approval of Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe, president of the National Council of Women Voters, passed, by unanimous vote, the following appeal to the Legislative Assembly of Oregon, with a request that Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, the venerable president of the state association, and mother of the equal suffrage movement in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, should present, in person, as a joint memorial to that honorable body.

Mrs. Duniway, in accepting the trust, said, in a voice husky with emotion, “My years are passing, but I shall take pleasure in presenting the memorial, and sincerely hope it will be the last appeal I shall ever be compelled to make to the sons of women for equal rights before the law for the mothers and daughters of men.”

The memorial, and subjoined copy of the proposed equal suffrage amendment follows:

To the Honorable Body, the Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon:

Gentlemen: Whereas, The agitation of the equal suffrage movement, which began in Old Oregon, in 1871, and has long been an established part of the state constitutions of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, and was adopted by an overwhelming vote of men at the late general election in the State of Washington; and

Whereas, California has caught the inspiration of the movement, and has passed, by its Legislative Assembly, a resolution for a referendum vote on an equal suffrage amendment, to be taken at the election of 1912, with no reasonable doubt of its ratification by a majority of the present electorate; and

Whereas, Montana is pressing close upon California, with a similar amendment; and

Whereas, The Equal Suffrage Association of Oregon with over forty thousand (40,000) women adherents, and a recorded vote of over thirty-six thousand (36,000) of the electorate at the past general elections; and

Whereas, The Equal Suffrage Association has not on file, in the office of the Secretary of State an initiative petition, for a vote for an equal suffrage amendment at the general election of 1912, and

Whereas, This agitation can never cease until the men of Oregon have crowned our efforts with victory; therefore

Be it resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives, jointly concurring:

Be it resolved by the Senate, the House concurring:

That we have carefully considered the Equal Suffrage Amendment, as submitted by initiative petition to the present legal voters of the State, for their adoption or rejection, and can see no reasonable objection to its adoption, and we cordially recommend its ratification at the November election of 1912.

[The resolution was referred to the Committee on Resolutions, as noted in later entries, but that referral was not noted in the proceedings.]

Journal of the Senate of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 384-85.

Kimberly Jensen's Author Webpage

About Me

Kimberly Jensen received her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in women’s and U.S. history and teaches history and gender studies at Western Oregon University.
She is the author of Oregon's Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism (University of Washington Press, 2012), Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (University of Illinois Press, 2008) and coeditor, with Erika Kuhlman, of Women and Transnational Activism in Historical Perspective (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters, 2010).
She is working on a new book project tentatively titled “Civic Borderlands: Oregon Women’s Claims to Citizenship and Civil Liberties, 1913-1924”